Balatro Arcade Cabinet

Overview

This took about 6 months to build, way too much money, and there are still some extra details I might add, but it’s at a stage where I’m happy to show it off now.

The cabinet is built on a RPi4 running RetroPie. Technically it could run just about any retro games, it just feels sacrilegious to play anything other than Balatro, so that’s all it has.

The game is modified with a few custom graphics, tooltips, jimbo quips, and integrations with the physical cabinet. For example the play/discard buttons light up when you are able to use them, and when you’re in the shop there are casino style lights around the logo (shown in some images).

Future Features

• Originally the game was going to start when you inserted a poker chip into the coin-slot. I just had trouble integrating this into the game. The coding side of this really isn’t something I’m great at.
• I would also like to make an arcade style leaderboard, where you enter a name to start a game, and it gets recorded to a public leaderboard.
• Some sort of visual detail when you get those little flames on the score would be cool, I just didn’t get around to it.

A huge amount of credit should go to my partner in this project, Seb, who did most of the woodworking and supplied emotional support when my electronics broke for the thousandth time.

I’m happy to share any other details anyone wants, or if you’re interested in building your own version send me a message and I can share any project files that might be useful.